Recognition
by Draconian Elflord
Summary: What would have happened if Sweeney had recognized Johanna? What, really, could he tell her? My first ST:DBoFS fiction. Please read and review. Criticism, even harsh criticism is welcome


Recognition

Disclaimer: Obviously, I don't own any character from the film "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" or any part of the plot.

So what I have here, basically, is a reimagining of a pivotal scene in the film. I imagined for a second, what would have happened if Benjamin had recognized Johanna. What would he tell her?

And with that...

**Recognition**

Sweeney Todd, Barber of Fleet Street, raised the razor high with an animal howl as splash after splash of the hot red liquid baptized him. He jammed the blade in again, pulled it out, jabbed it back in. Each jet escaped the mangled flesh, hot and fast. It coated his arms, his chest, his face. The sound of his proclamation, though wordless, drowned out the last death gurgles of the only man he had ever hated with any true passion: a passion that, over fifteen years, consumed every other, even the passion for Lucy…for his fatherless Johanna. It was in his eyes, even in his mouth.

With a particularly vindictive shove at the pedal, the stained and torn body of the Judge tumbled out of sight. Through the corpse's descent, he could just make out the fires of the bakehouse, still glowing hot and strong even at this hour. Good old Mrs. Lovett; at last, he could count on her for something. He crumpled on the floor as the laughter started to ride through him. He couldn't see, couldn't smell, couldn't feel anything but the hot red blood. It rose over him like an ocean wave, wrapped him in its arms and filled his lungs and over.

For a moment, London heard his voice. London, the pit, heard the voice of its only just and sane citizen. He let out one last sigh, clutching his only friend, still sharp. He'd never know peace, but perhaps, for tonight…

Until a creak of old leather and metal broke it. A pair of sneaking eyes were watching him in the lowlight.

Rage surged through Sweeney's body as he bolted across the room and threw back the lid. He didn't even mind the banging it made. "Come for a shave, eh?" Sweeny snarled at small, slight young man. A few drops of blood sprayed off his lips and into the young man's face. His skin was so soft, so pale, he could not have been a local boy; his arms were so scrawny, Sweeny could have bet five pounds he could have picked the boy up and throw him over his shoulders. Certainly, he could and did manhandle him into the chair. "Everyone needs a good shave, eh?"

"Please, sir," even his voice sounded soft and afraid, he was trembling so. "I didn't' mean to-"

"No trouble at all, it's on the house!" His friend, his only friend, pressed against the hairless face. "Always a pleasure to serve my friends and neighbors!"

"Sir, I beg you! My God, my life, Mercy!" He screamed; not shouted, screamed. He was struggling against Sweeny's grip now, pushing about, trying to escape.

"Mercy???" Sweeny roared, pinning the young figure down. "You deserve Mer-"

He stopped.

In the struggle, the boy's hat had fallen off, revealing the color of his hair.

Yellow hair.

"J…Johanna?" he groaned exasperatedly at last, still gripping holding her down by the sternum.

"God, let me go!" she shrieked, her blue eyes filling with tears. "On the name of the Father, please!"

"Johanna…Johanna! Johanna, oh, Johanna, you're here, you're here!" he babbled. With a strong sweep, he pulled the girl out of the ghastly chair and into his arms. "You've no idea-"

"You monster, how do you know my name?!?" she slammed her weak, little fists against his chest, still damp with the night's accomplishments. "Tell me how you know my name!"

"But you don't understand!" he smiled at his long lost child. Red smears were on her face where his fingers were clutching it tightly, still not daring to believe it. "Johanna, listen to me. Your last name: I know it! It's not Turpin, its Barker-"

"Mrs. Lovett! Help! Oh, God, anyone, anyone!"

"Its Barker, its Barker! I know all about you, just let me prove it, then you'll understand, then you'll know. Your mother, her name was Lucy, and your father, your father was named Benj-"

Across the room, a long lone mirror stood against the wall, the same one that had been here when he first lived here, where Lucy had tried on her new hats and adjusted tender summer frocks, where she'd insisted on retying his collars with a kiss above his temple. It was the mirror where they'd paraded a toddling girl, still unable to walk or talk, out to wave and say "Mumma, Daddy, and Jo-Jo!" Now, a man, disfigured by ten years of injustice, weakened by insomnia and poverty, but most of all twisted by a relentless rage, stood, decorated blood and a demonic smile, clutching a frightened girl.

What could he tell her, really, and what would she believe?

"Benjamin Barker…was your father…and my only friend, Johanna." He smiled gently now, holding her wrists more lightly now. "Please listen to me, please believe me, or all my actions are in vain, and your parents died for naught."

Johanna looked down. A tic began above her left eye as the tears began to fall. A stress reaction, nothing more. Slowly, she removed her hands from his powerful grip, laid them at her sides, and looked up at him.

"I…I don't know how to believe you!" she cried. "Please, tell me what all of this means." She really did have such yellow hair, the color of her mothers. It tumbled down, the pins having been shaken out now.

What could he tell her, what would she believe? He had nowhere to lean, nowhere to sit her down and take what hours, what days it would take to explain it. And yet, the words came before he knew he had them.

"I was a tyrant, a wicked and horrible boy when I met him at the prison camps. I am sick, you understand; they've told me forever that I was simply just born a sick boy. Even as a barber's boy, even a skilled one, I was a drunkard, a thief, a brawler, a pervert, a general menace, it's such a wonder the court didn't hang me outright. And even then, I wasn't satisfied. Don't you know I groaned and cursed God and the queen and everything as I toiled under that beautiful sky? Australia," for once, he remembered it differently; for once, Sweeney could remember it, those clearest of aquamarine skies, "Even that island's beauty was lost to me. Hatred, perhaps even the devil, dwelt in me, and no man I met could ever sway me. If anything, prison was on its way to making me a hard, heartless man.

"Then I met Barker.

"What can I say? You do not remember that gentle, Christian man you so resemble, do not know how much he was anguished mere that he could never see you again, your mother. He spoke of nothing but-"

"The judge," she interrupted, "Judge Turpin, he told me my father was a vicious criminal."

"It isn't true, Johanna!" Sweeney had to stop himself from grabbing her again, it was so urgent. The words were, were becoming real "Benjamin Barker…if only you knew the goodness of the man. He took me…me! Just a sinner, just a sick lost child, under his wing, taught me his compassion. Those lessons, those words he gave me talking of forgiveness and love…only love drove that man…they were meant for you, I know they were. I'd give anything that Fate had sent me to the gallows and him to be found innocent, found him free from the wrath of that foul judge."

"Then he really did not abandon me? For all these years I have dreamt to know…but did why did he not come, why did he not come to me himself?"

"He fell ill."A hole was starting somewhere in his heart. Somewhere in his mind's eye, Sweeney could almost see it, a Barker never become a Todd, squandering and failing away in fever in a shadowy cave so far away across the ocean. "A fatal fever. Our warders didn't care to help: what was another prisoner dead to them?.I had en learned to pray, he had taught me. But in the end…in the end," he drew a breath, cool and silent. His eyes dropped down.

Had some part of the Barker truly died?

"In the end," he continued after several moments, "he could only think of you. He knew he wouldn't see it himself, so he told me where to find you…how to find this," he motioned towards the room, still splattering blood about, "the place you lived, where you were born, with a noble father and a virtuous mother. He trusted me with his last breath, made me pledge to fulfill my promise.

"And I came back to London, this hellhole, all for you, Johanna, for Barker's wish. I wanted to find you, to tell you to forgive his false memory and create a new one of him."

Sweeney stared back into the glass. The malicious smile, twisted and bent, was gone, even as he was bent, dark eyed and sallow skinned; still a creature of London.

"But I became changed again, when I saw the injustice the Judge had succeeded in. I didn't practice Barker's ways: when I learned how you lived, how he was never punished and could never be, I began my war on the public, on all who even resembled your judge."

Johanna, still dressed as a young man, stood, staring, no doubt at the confession. What could she possibly think of him? And the words still came. The blood, he could feel it drying on his skin now, a map on his face and across his body. Almost as if he were wearing him, the judge.

"You've never killed, I know: you couldn't know how very easy it become, how very simple it is to slit a throat. It consumes, it becomes mania, until nothing remains. The one you saw slaughter the judge tonight was no man, only a beast. That compassion Barker taught me, the God I found under his guidance; where is it in this face you see? I do not mean to earn God's forgiveness…but perhaps, yours?"

He held the red hand out to her, and she did not move to take it. Her lip was still trembling. A new tear quivered at her eyelid, just tempted to fall. Slowly, she stepped forward with one foot and spoke softly.

"Sir. Mr. Todd. You have yet not told me how you recognized me."

A careful hand reached up to her face; she made to shy away, but didn't. A single strand of the only recently ragged hair ran between his fingers.

"Your father told me it was the most fantastic shade of yellow," he smiled, "he could speak of it for hours."

"And my mother?"

"Is dead, Johanna."

A strange look washed over her face. "Why…if my father was stolen away before she died…how can you be so sure?"

A scream from below interrupted her, Lovett's voice, come from the bakehouse, but after fifteen years, ever mortal terror could wait yet another minute. Sweeney looked deep into his daughters face, stricken from the scream, clutched at her shoulders once again. "Listen to me, Johanna. That boy, your lover, Anthony, you sincerely love and trust him?"

"I'm certain," she answered without hesitation.

"Then flee this place now, immediately. Wait for him in the street, if you must," he pushed his daughter towards the door, not daring to look back at her, lest he think twice. "Don't ever remember you ever knew men named Justice Turpin or Sweeney Todd." He turned his back on her, collected his razor, his only friend, from the floor, sat still half transfixed by his own dark glass.

"Mr. Todd?"

The girl was standing just on the precipice of the door. He glanced back at her

"I know God's ears are never closed to the sincere," she whispered. "Even in the last hour, He can grant forgiveness to those who desire it, even to the vilest sinner. I know it. I know my father knew it too." The door creaked on its hinges as it closed behind her, the sound of her small, stiff boots descending the stairs, echoing into the night.

She was gone, if not physically.

It stuck in his mind, even as his mind screamed for some end to the chaos, trundling down the stairs towards the scream. It stuck in his mind, even as he felt a new warm liquid, not blood, washing over his face. It stuck in his mind as he lifted his friend once again, even after he'd insisted his friend could rest.

_Why…if my father was stolen away before she died…how can you be so sure?" _


End file.
